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January 16, 2006
KDE SWF discussions
KDE SWF discussions: I missed this last Tuesday, but it's an interesting read... Zack Rusin nails a point which many miss: "SWF is very different from SVG though. Yes, they both are technically vector graphics formats, but their usage is completely different. SWF is used to create complete applications." But he also says something which is counter to my own experience: "The reason people use SWF is because the creator for them is simply really good." I've always found a bigger reason to be the predictability of the format on Other Peoples Machines... the reliable capability of the Macromedia Flash Player played a bigger role than the niceties of the Macromedia authoring environments, from what I've seen. The comments are largely about who misquotes whom, but one says: "By empowering closed formats we ourselves are giving the power to control the creative future in the hands of the companies controlling those formats. You are the only person around who I have seen who gets this." Adobe does retain an influence on SWF9, SWF10, and future file formats... but SWF8, SWF7, SWF6, these are all a done deal, and Adobe cannot change them. It's also nigh impossible to make a new renderer which significantly degrades the performance of those existing de facto standards... the San Francisco building may be of brick, but I'm confident sufficient torches and pitchforks could take it down, were we to break backwards-compatibility. (Matter of fact, it's the opensource Player efforts which seem more dangerous to predictable backwards-compability -- cloning and forking and feature subsets would replicate the chaos and slow growth of the HTML-related spec-first approach.) SWF8 is now a given in the world, and Macromedia Flash Player 8 is rapidly becoming a given on the world's machines, and whether these now meet your needs or not is a bigger consideration than how a future enhancement may evolve. The conversation here is a good read, though, to see things through a different group of opensource contributors. (Scary quote: "Influencing the political process with the goal to forbid closed file formats is imho the better way to solve this problem for all future file formats, instead fighting the windmill vanes again and again." Removing the right of individuals to agree on the formats they wish to use sounds like a very centralist, top-down, authoritarian approach...!)
Posted by John Dowdell at January 16, 2006 05:13 PM
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Comments
I've recently seen an awesome application implemented with SVG. I didn't realize just how robust an application you could build with SVG.
But, you're right that the reason people choose SWF is because of a predictability on the client machine. The only reason I was able to see the cool SVG app was because the developer hit a wall with it and wanted to redevelop it in Flash.
Posted by: Satori Canton at January 17, 2006 07:02 AM
SWF8 doesn't seem to be a given on Linux. All the sites that I actually want to see Flash on seem to have upgraded and I can't use them unless I booted up in Windows that day.
I'm into SVG but I also completely understand why developers choose Flash so often. In a lot of situations, I would too.
Really I'm just bitter that I can't play Neopets on KDE :(
Posted by: Rob at January 17, 2006 01:47 PM
"SWF8 doesn't seem to be a given on Linux."
True, not even for *any* Linux... Macromedia Flash Player for Linux is currently version 7.0, and the next will be v8.5, skipping an 8.0 Player... Emmy's got the versioning info, and Tinic has more background... further context from last summer.
... hmm, but that's interesting Rob, I haven't known ways to efficiently test SWF8 adoption on the world's websites... maybe I should switch back to Player 7 for awhile, see what I bump into on the web....
Posted by: John Dowdell at January 17, 2006 10:10 PM
I think Flash is more convinient for most people. But I cannot find a good swf compressor-decompressor for Flash format. Where should I look for?
Posted by: stv_es at January 19, 2006 02:37 AM
SWF already uses a variety of compression schemes, decompressed within Macromedia Flash Player.
Posted by: John Dowdell at January 19, 2006 08:16 AM
Try www.dcomsoft.com
Posted by: user_uk at January 26, 2006 12:09 AM
I disagree with both the quotes you started with. SVG can be used to write applications. I wrote a little game in it myself (using a text editor), but Adobe used to have some quite impressive applications linked from their website (when they were backing SVG). And I found Macromedia Flash (the authoring environment) really counter-intuitive. I did a couple of little animations, but never managed to write an application. I just gave up on it. However I guess this is personal preference, others obviously find it quite useable.
And I think you may have missed the point about Adobe controlling SWF. You write "but SWF8, SWF7, SWF6, these are all a done deal, and Adobe cannot change them." Yes, they are finalised, but they are not open in the sense that noone else is allowed to write a player for them (or at least not without reverse-engineering the file format). And Rob points out a practical problem with this: "SWF8 doesn't seem to be a given on Linux. All the sites that I actually want to see Flash on seem to have upgraded and I can't use them unless I booted up in Windows that day." If Adobe decided to cease distribution of the Flash player for Linux altogether, then we'd really be stuck. You might argue that they are not likely to do this. Maybe, I don't know, but they have the power to, and by going with SWF, we are placing our future in their hands. (And using torches and pitchforks to take down the Adobe building does not strike me as a sensible solution.)
Also I don't find your 'scary quote' as scary as you do. They're not talking about forbidding people from writing file formats from what I can tell, but rather about forbidding people from keeping them secret (or otherwise closed). It's not centeralist or top-down. I'm not sure whether you'd call it authoritirian, but it would be a level playing field, and it would save a lot of time-wasting reverse-engineering. However I can't see it happening.
Posted by: James G at February 10, 2006 12:27 AM